This led to various rumors speculating on his unlock method, sometimes involving the perceived number 2401. Players may have struggled to believe in Luigi's absence as he had been a playable character in every prior Super Mario game, aside from the Super Mario Land games.Ī popular urban legend was that Luigi could be unlocked as a playable character. Consequently, the plaque was theorized to have connections to Luigi, a character who makes no appearance in the game. The most common interpretation of the plaque's inscription was that the top line reads " L is real 2401". They thought people would try and try to figure out what it means. The real answer is that the programmers put it in there as a joke. Many people think that it’s a hint that Luigi is in the game and it has something to do with a special code. The letter contains the following official explanation of the plaque's inscription. On December 2, 2016, redditor b0nd18t posted an image of a letter they received from Nintendo of America on May 7, 1998. 2, Super Mario Maker as one of many Mystery Mushroom costumes, Super Mario Run, and Super Mario Bros. through a cheat code, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Super Mario 3D Land, New Super Mario Bros.
(He was added as a non-playable character in an update.)Īlso possibly in acknowledgment of this rumor, Luigi has been an unlockable character in many Super Mario games from the Nintendo DS era onwards: Super Mario 64 DS alongside Mario and Wario, New Super Mario Bros. Paralleling his absences from the earlier sandbox-style games 64 and Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi did not appear in Odyssey at launch, despite the statue's return. The Super Mario 64 statue reappeared, using the original model and textures, in Super Mario Odyssey's reconstruction of the courtyard. The texture for the plaque was reused in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. An official statement from 1998 explains that the plaque is intentionally illegible and meaningless, and no hard evidence to the contrary has emerged.
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On November 13, 1996, having received constant fake strategies for how to unlock Luigi, video game website IGN offered a US$100 reward for an authentic unlock method the bounty went unclaimed as no proof of Luigi's existence was forthcoming. Rumors on how to unlock Luigi included (but were not limited to) collecting every coin in the game, running laps around certain landmarks, and collecting every Power Star under a time limit. The illegible writing on this statue's plaque became the game's greatest mystery for 20 years, with the interpretation " L is real 2401" prevailing as the most popular reading, and a recognizable way to refer to theories surrounding the statue. In Super Mario 64, the courtyard at the back of Princess Peach's Castle includes a statue of a Power Star, where Mario spawns from if he is ejected from the nearby course Big Boo's Haunt.